In this issue, we cover delivery ceremony for a new-building vessel, which took place on June 12, 2003.

The vessel is a sister ship to m.t. Petro Combo, a high-spec petroleum product tanker of 16,500tdw. As we reported earlier, this one, we mean the newest one, was already named at the time of contract signing as her elder sister. Do you remember ? Yes, we are talking about m.t. PETRO VARIO! The name, "various" in English, reflects shipowner's hope that she will be active in various logistics scenes, with various cargoes, and for various cargo owners.

Honorable guests for this ceremony included Mr. and Mrs. Alan Chan, Chairman, and Mr. Kee, Director from Petroships, and other ladies and gentlemen from Singapore. Of course, Mr. Okamoto, our president, and Mr. Ochi, Senior Managing Director, were so delighted to have another reunion with the shipowner, his family and friends!

One thing we had not expected was bad weather - in fact, it was quite a stormy day, and we were really concerned about how our guests were feeling, until Mr. Chan kindly told us a Chinese legend, which had defined rain as sign of good luck for a delivery. We were thankful about the delicate attention paid by the chairman of Petroships.

And, what made the ceremony unforgettable to us, was the speech by the shipowner!

Mr. Chan expressed his, and his company's tremendous satisfaction about the tanker's quality, which became even better than that of her elder sister, according to the speech. Of course, as quality-oriented shipbuilder, we had been confident that we could have a good achievement, but this direct reconfirmation, made by a reputable tanker operator having daily businesses with oil majors, frankly gave us an unspeakable relief, though, after a decade where we concentrated our efforts solely on dry ships.

We would like to thank Mr. Chan and Petroships again, for giving us a good opportunity to prove ourselves a capable tanker builder. We will keep trying hard to further improve quality of our tanker products!

[2003/07/10]